16 pages • 32 minutes read
Video Blues
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Literary Devices
Form
“Video Blues” is a villanelle, which is a fixed form consisting of 19 lines divided into five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (four-line stanza). Villanelles follow a set pattern of repetition where the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternately at the end of the following stanzas, and both are repeated at the end of the final quatrain. This can be seen in the poem as the line “My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy” (Lines 1, 6, 12, 18) repeats at the end of the second and fourth stanzas, as well as the second-to-last line in the final quatrain. The line “It makes some evenings harder to enjoy” (Lines 3, 9, 19) also repeats at the end of the third stanza and, with variation, the end of the fifth and sixth stanzas. Due to this set repeating pattern, villanelles are often used as a vehicle for portraying topics that are obsessive and circular. This can be seen in the poem as the speaker compulsively worries about her husband’s crushes and makes no linear progress toward solving the problem.
Villanelles also use a set ABA rhyme scheme (with ABAA in the final quatrain), as can be seen with the open “-oy” sound alternating with the closed “-eet” sound in “Video Blues.” This gives a revolving and accordion-like feeling to the poem as the sounds compress and expand the end of each line.
Meter and Enjambment
In addition to the formal constraints of repetition and rhyme, villanelles are also traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a sequence of five (penta) iambs, metrical feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. For example, the line “My hus | band has | a crush | on Myr | na Loy” contains five syllabic units. Iambic pentameter is known as a conversational meter, as it most closely mimics the patterns of natural speech. This enhances the casual tone of the poem, where readers are brought into a personal situation surrounding a couple’s marriage. Salter follows the villanelle’s traditional meter to establish a musical quality to the poem that enhances its connection to the blues tradition.
However, through the use of enjambment, the continuation of a sentence beyond a line break, Salter is able to avoid rigidity or formality creeping in. One example of this technique is in the first line of the fifth stanza: “And can’t a woman have her dreamboats? Boy, / I wouldn’t say my life is incomplete” (Lines 13-14). The speaker poses a question that is one unstressed syllable short of iambic pentameter. Salter uses enjambment to break the line in the middle of the sentence after the interjection of “Boy” (Line 13). This enhances the speaker’s casual and conversational voice while still largely following the villanelle’s formal iambic pentameter conventions.
Diction and Syntax
The diction in “Video Blues” creates a tone of lighthearted annoyance that disguises the magnitude and depth of meaning in the poem. For example, presenting the problem of the poem as a “crush” (Line 1) gives it a youthful, temporary feeling. Crushes are typically things that come and go, but this line repeats four times throughout the poem. This creates tension in the poem as the speaker reveals the magnitude and emotional impact of these crushes. Similarly, the use of “dreamboat” (Line 13) in the fourth stanza deliberately enhances the lighthearted and comical tone while remaining at odds with the emotional stakes of the poem.
As a whole, the poem uses simple vocabulary in mostly syntactically simple sentences. This pattern is disrupted, however, in the fifth and sixth stanzas as the syntax becomes more complicated. The longest, most grammatically complex sentence in the poem describes the speaker’s hypothetical enjoyment of a night with Cary Grant:
And can’t a woman have her dreamboats? Boy,
I wouldn’t say my life is incomplete,
but some evening I could certainly enjoy
two hours with Cary Grant as my own toy (Lines 13-16).
No other sentence spans the length of an entire stanza, and this decision exemplifies the large effect these crushes have on the speaker, moving her away from her typically measured speech in iambic pentameter to a faster-paced admission of a desire for a fantasy relationship outside of her marriage.
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